Getty Museum

[Woman in a room with hanging heads]

Date

1880s–1890s

Medium

Albumen silver print and collodion print with brown ink and wash.

Culture

British

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

Victorian photocollagists sometimes took their subjects from literature and fairytales. This particularly gory collage illustrates a scene from _Bluebeard_, a folktale popularized by Charles Perrault (1628-1703). It tells the story of a rich man who serially decapitated his new wives and hung their heads in a sealed underground room. Eventually, his still-living wife “of the day” discovered the horrific remains of her predecessors. She escaped the same fate by killing her husband with the help of her sister and brother-in-law. Following his demise, she remarried and lived a full life in the castle she inherited. A photocollage artist wielded great power through her choice of imagery and setting. In her selection of whom to “decapitate” in this scene, the collagist may have been expressing her feelings about those family members and “friends.” In the process she was regulating her social relationships. Carolyn Peter, J. Paul Getty Museum, Department of Photographs 2021 For more information about this album see the extended essay.

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